Critical Essay by Wendy Wall

In the following excerpt, Wall studies the relationship between the play's treatment of fairylore and Elizabethan conceptions of social order.

Why does puck sweep? At the end of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon and his troupe of fairies enter the Athenian palace to bless the aristocratic newlyweds as they set out to consummate their marriages. After waxing lyrical about screeching predators and demonic spirits, Puck describes his nocturnal mission as an oddly mundane hallowing: “I am sent with broom before, / To sweep the dust behind the door” (5.1.389-90).1 When the fairies saunter casually into the ducal palace, the magic that had been located specifically within the forest is unleashed onto Theseus's domestic, if hyperrational...